It was all part of an attempt Tuesday to solve the mystery of the leaking International Space Station.

“The cosmonauts spent hours using knives and what looked like garden shears to cut away at the insulation around the spacecraft’s orbital module, to peek at the damaged area,” NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel reported. “All along, mission control in Moscow pleaded with them to take it slow so they wouldn’t make the situation worse.”

(3) ABOUT THAT SPACE SUIT. What if the ISS damage is sabotage? Matthew Reardon explains “The Space Law of Sabotage on the ISS” to readers of the SFWA Blog. (Why would the law in space be any clearer than the law on earth?)

…The first thing we can hope is that there haven’t been criminal acts, sabotage or other, committed on the ISS. Because the relevant space law is a bit of a mess currently, and without any precedent, it could turn into a muddle that would hinder our expansion into space for a long time.

The first thing to point out is that the ISS isn’t a single legal entity. Under the Intergovernmental Agreement signed by the fourteen countries participating in the ISS, each State’s laws remain applicable in the elements it registers. Therefore, in criminal matters, even though the Agreement clearly states that each State’s laws regulate the activities of its nationals on the ISS, each individual piece of the ISS is ruled by different penal law depending on the country that provided that piece.

Theoretically, U.S. criminal law is applicable inside the Destiny lab module (which still raises the question of which U.S. States’ criminal law, but at least that’s a question that can be resolved internally to the U.S.), Russian criminal law in the Zvezda module, Japanese law in the Kibomodule, and so on.

Belated Hollywood sequels have sunk more often than soared in recent years, but Disney shrugs off those odds with Mary Poppins Returns, an enchanting movie musical that picks up the threads of the studio’s cherished original more than half a century after its 1964 release. Sticking close to the enduring classic’s template while injecting plenty of freshness to give the follow-up its own distinct repro vitality, this lovingly crafted production delivers both nostalgia and novelty. Ideally cast from top to toe, and graced by tuneful songs from Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman that genuflect to the invaluable contributions of the Sherman Brothers on Mary Poppins, this is a charmer only cynics could resist.

What follows is an explanation of some of the terms used among convention attendees and convention runners to describe the most common types of conventions. One of the goals I have in this article is to focus on terms that don’t also have value judgments. In my experience, there are good and bad examples of almost every type of convention, and everyone’s taste in conventions is slightly different. Hopefully, this will help you narrow down what types of conventions you might like to attend!

Here are the first couple entries in his catalog —

Anime Con

Anime conventions are centered around Japanese animation and related subjects. One of the big things to keep in mind with anime conventionsis that they come in a variety of sizes and shapes, and some are organized by nonprofits while others are for profit. In the Twin Cities, we have fan-run anime conventions like Anime Detour and Anime Fusion. There are a number of large ones around the country, like A Cen (Anime Central) and Anime Expo.

Just as he is making his big-screen debut in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Miles Morales is swinging back into the pages of Marvel Comics in an all-new debut with MILES MORALES: SPIDER-MAN #1! Written by Eisner Award winner Saladin Ahmed (Exiles) with art by celebrated Marvel Young Gun Javier Garrón (Ant-Man & The Wasp) and a cover by Brian Stelfreeze (Black Panther), Miles’ latest adventure brings Miles back to Brooklyn basics… but things definitely aren’t simple when a simple robbery is complicated with a big Spidey-Villain and an even bigger mystery!

“It’s very much intended for folks who might not know the character or might not even have read a Spider-Man comic, and for them to be able to access what’s universal and what’s immediately appealing about this character and about the Marvel Universe,” said Ahmed.

(7) GERNSBACK VIDEO. A Twitter video clip of Sam Moskowitz and Hugo Gernsback from a 1965 BBC Horizon documentary about the relationship between SF and science. First time I’ve seen any video of Gernsback.

#OTD 1965: Horizon quizzed Sam Moskowitz and Hugo Gernsback on the relationship between science fiction and real life science pic.twitter.com/9CJZymAhcS

When there’s a Red Alert on this bridge, everybody lands on their feet. If you’re a fan of the Star Trek Cats series by Jenny Parks, you need this 2019 calendar. If you’re not, allow us to explain. Parks has created a hilarious new take on ST:TNG characters and scenes by illustrating the characters as cats. Star Trek plus cats. What could be better?

Born December 12, 1946 – Josepha Sherman. Writer and folklorist who was a Compton Crook Award winner for The Shining Falcon which was based on the Russian fairy tale The Feather of Finist the Falcon. She was a prolific writer both on her own and with other writers such as Mercedes Lackey with whom she wrote A Cast of Corbies, and two Buffyverse novels with Laura Anne Gilman.

I knew her personally as a folklorist first and that is she was without peer writing such works as Rachel the Clever: And Other Jewish Folktales and Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood that she wrote with T K F Weisskopf. Neat lady who died far too soon. Let me leave you with an essay she wrote on Winter for Green Man twenty years ago, “Josepha Sherman’s Winter Queen Speech” (Died 2012.)

Born December 12, 1949 – Bill Nighy, 69. He’s got a very, very long genre association staring with being an unnamed ENT physician in Curse of the Pink Panther. He was Martin Barton in The Phantom of the Opera, Edward Gardner in Fairy Tale: A True Story, Viktor In Underworld and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, Philip in Shaun of the Dead, an hilarious Slartibartfast in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a quite unrecognisable as him Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Rufus Scrimgeour In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1… I’m stopping right before this get really long. Fortunately his television genre credits may be limited to an uncredited appearance in the “Vincent and the Doctor” episode of Dr. Who as Dr. Black.

Born December 12, 1965 – Toni Weisskopf, 53. Editor and the publisher of Baen Books In 2015, Weisskopf was nominated for a Hugo Award.

Born December 12, 1970 — Mädchen Amick, 48. TwinPeaks: Fire Walk with Me was not actually her first genre role as she played a Young Anya on Star Trek:The Next Generation a year or a so earlier. She’s shapeshifter on the rebooted Fantasy Island and yet another shapeshifter, a black cat this time, on Witches of East End. Typecasting I think.

Born December 12, 1970 – Jennifer Connelly, 48. First genre was as Sarah Williams in Labyrinth. Later appearances in our community include as Jenny Blake in The Rocketeer a film I love, Emma Murdoch / Annan in Dark City, Betsy Ross in the 2003 Hulk, Helen Benson in the 2008 remake of the 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still and no, it’s not anywhere as good as the original, Roxane in Inkheart, Virginia Gamely in Winter’s Tales based on the novel of the same name that I never finished, and a voice-only appearance only as Karen in Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Born December 12, 1975 – Mayim Bialik, 43. Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler, PhD on the Big Bang Theory series which I’m not sure is genre but is certainly genre friendly. Appearance in other genre undertakings as the Pumpkinhead horror film, The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, Stan Lee’s Mighty 7 and The Adventures of Hyperman.

Born December 12, 1976 – Tim Pratt, 42. I think his best work was his very first novel which was The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl but there’s no doubt that later work such as The Constantine Affliction, Bone Shop and The Stormglass Protocol are equally superb. That’s not to overlook his short fiction which you’ve not tried it you should and I’d recommend Little Gods as a good place to start.

My ACTUAL plan is to pitch a television series where I and Wil Wheaton travel the world discovering unfamiliar-to-us foods and at the end of each show I make a questionable burrito using local cuisine and make him eat it. https://t.co/qRfQfFt8gR

(12) 2001. On December 20, Chicago’s Adler Planetarium will be showing 2001: A Space Odyssey followed by a discussion of the film by astronomer Mark Hammergren and SF critic Gary Wolfe: “Adler After Dark: Space Odyssey”.

Join astronomer Mark Hammergren and sci-fi editor, critic, and biographer Gary Wolfe in a spirited discussion on the impact 2001 had on film-making and its role in “blowing our minds” during the Apollo era

Try your hand at stopping the devious HAL 9000 from taking over the event in a museum-wide scavenger hunt

Learn more about film-making techniques, ranging from sound design to stop-motion animation

And don’t miss a special improv show where we’ll explore the future as imagined inyour fav sci-fi films!

(13) EDUCATIONAL POP-UPS. “Before they were relegated to the domain of children, books with movable mechanisms explained anatomy, astronomy, and more to adults.” — “When Pop-Up Books Taught Popular Science” in The Atlantic.

One of the most successful popular astronomy books of the 16th century was Peter Apian’s Cosmographia, a work that went through almost 40 editions in Latin, Dutch, French, and Spanish. Apian included five different volvelles in the book. One of these volvelles demonstrates the relationship between the moon and the sun and the phases of the moon.

The volvelle consists of two paper wheels connected with a small piece of string to a printed circle. The topmost wheel has a circular hole, revealing the lower wheel beneath. Both wheels can be rotated freely in either direction. The top wheel of the volvelle has an indicator with the moon on it. Spinning this wheel represents the moon’s west-to-east monthly circuit around the Earth. The lower wheel has an indicator with the sun on it. Spinning this wheel represents the sun’s yearly west-to-east motion. When the reader moves the two wheels, the phases of the moon appear in the hole cut out of the top wheel.

(14) VISIT FROM THE CREATOR. William F. Nolan posed beside the poster for the Logan’s Run movie while visiting the Pasadena Museum’s sff exhibit earlier this year.

“Every production is different,” Bristol says. “The process is usually the same, but how the storyboards are utilized depends on the director and their own process.” Chris McQuarrie, the director of Mission: Impossible–Fallout, tends to rely heavily on storyboards, Bristol notes, whereas Terrence Malick, with whom Bristol worked on The Thin Red Line and Tree of Life, is more of an “in the moment” director for whom storyboards are merely a suggestion.

The woman who created and sold what many recognise as the world’s first word processor has died aged 93.

Evelyn Berezin called the device the Data Secretary when, in 1971, her company Redactron launched the product.

She grew Redactron from nine employees to close to 500 and was named one of theUS’s top leaders by BusinessWeek magazine in the year she sold it, 1976.

(17) NAMING CONVENTIONS. Poul Anderson loved alien names with apostrophes stuck in the middle – and he may have used up the genre’s quota in the process. At least, I think that’s what Sarah A. Hoyt is warning against in “Words and the Lonely Writer, part 5 – Made Up Languages” at Mad Genius Club.

….Why do apostrophes make the baby Jesus cry? Because while perfectly acceptable as a marking they were a) overused by early sf/f writers so those of us who’ve read deeply into the field roll our eyes to the back of our heads when we see them. b)because they’re not THAT common in English, particularly not mid-word. So when I see R’neker’vir I pause for a couple of seconds. This can be enough to break the spell. Sure, your writing can overcome it, but why make it more difficult? Do you have so many readers you need to cut down some?

Okay, so you aren’t a linguist, and you’re not as weird as the rest of us, and you’ve never made up a language. BUT your new world absolutely needs it.

Start small. First, if you’re doing weird names, decide what the parts of the name mean and whether they bear on the society or the hierarchy or just on your species.

For instance, a species born from eggs (external, laid eggs, smarty pants) might have a lot of names with egg or shell or whatever. One that’s incredibly hierarchical might build in things that mean “second son of the lowest sweeper.”

After that consider your society. Is there some feature so weird, so outlandish you feel the need to emphasize it with a made up word?

While Elseworlds ended in a suitably epic fashion, this final chapter did raise a number of issues. Along with some continuity problems and questions about the science involved in the final battle, there are a few Easter Eggs to consider along with some major questions of events to come in the Arrowverse. Here are six questions to consider in the wake of Elseworlds‘ conclusion….

Scientists have made a fascinating discovery on asteroid Bennu thanks to NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.

Recently analyzed data from the probe has identified water locked inside the asteroid’s clay, the space agency has announced. The spacecraft’s two spectrometers revealed the presence of “hydroxyls,” which are molecules containing oxygen and hydrogen atoms bonded together.

…Equally, in China, the angel emoji, which int he West can denote innocence or having performed a good deed, is used a sign for death, and may be perceived as threatening.

Similarly, the applause emojis are used in the West to show praise or offer congratulations. In China, however, this is a symbol for making love, perhaps due to its resemblance to the sounds “pah pah pah”…

If you liked Wonder Woman and Moana in part because they were films led by strong female characters, then it looks like you weren’t alone.

Conventional wisdom in Hollywood is that male stars are a bigger box office draw, often the reason given for their higher salaries.

But that may have been a miscalculation according to new analysis, showing films with female leads earn more.

Researchers looked at the top 350 grossing films between 2014 and 2017.

The correlation was true irrespective of how big the production budget was: films where female stars had top billing, made more money than those with male stars.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Michael O’Donnell, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Carl Slaughter, John A Arkansawyer, Steven H Silver, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File770 contributing editor of the day Kip Williams.]

40 times for Star Wars (original)! In my defence, I was 21, lived across from the theatre and was working as a security guard at a slaughterhouse. Vicarious escape was required. The sight, smell, and sound of tons of cow guts dropping into the back of a dump truck made even the garbage compactor scene attractive by comparison.
Plus, it only cost a couple of bucks back then.

@Patrick Morris Miller: Because elision is supposed to be euphonious. Oh?

@Vicki Rosenzweig: as I’ve seen it used, “participatory” doesn’t mean “everybody works”; it means that everyone’s involved at more-or-less the same level, instead of some people being hired for the rest of the con to gawp at.

(1) I struggled for an answer to this. I can think of several movies I’ve seen many times on TV and I can think of a few movies I’ve seen twice at the movies but I can’t think of any I’ve seen more than twice.

1) I think I saw the original Star Wars one more time than Empire Strikes Back in theaters over various re-releases of the two, although I might have seen them the same number of times. Fantasia is probably third, and I don’t think I’ve seen any other movie apart from Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace more than once in theaters.

steve davidson: The only part of the things you cite that could be considered factual is that all the above cons are descended from the volunteer-run participatory template, and even then, there’s a question whether commercial conventions from other fields had more of an influence on the creation of what we generally call media cons. Everything else is the opinion of someone who still sounds like he chants “fans are slans” when given the chance, and wants to be a gatekeeper as to what is the one true fandom.

Considering your low opinion of certain other gatekeeping groups, I should consider that particular beam in your own eye before condemning those who enjoy other types of conventions or at least don’t consider your personal favourite to be an essential experience.

Huh. Seeing movies in the theatre more than once is probably partly a sign of being an old fogey. Once upon a time, it was the only way to see a movie more than once. And for quite a while after that, your only other option was to hope it was shown on TV at some point, probably in a horribly edited version–not exactly a great choice. But since the dawn of the VCR, there have been other options, and today there are a variety.

(Of course, there are still other reasons to see a movie in the theatre, one or more times, so the practice hasn’t gone away, but I suspect it’s a whole lot less common than it used to be.)

Now I am old enough to remember the pre-VCR days. But I still don’t think there are very many movies I’ve seen in the theatre more than two or three times, and I’m really not sure which ones those would be.

The movie most seen in the theater for me depends on the definition of the theater. I saw Rocky Horror at Suncon, I got the Carleton movie society to show it at the college. I saw it opening night at the Uptown theater in Mpls before the audience participation ramped up and I think I saw twice more at the Uptown later on.

The other choices would be childhood favorites Hitari and Lobo which I saw 4 times each.

I’ve not been to the cinema much overall (it’s always been fairly pricey during my lifetime), and I have the terrible, disturbing thought that the only films I’ve seen more than once in the cinema might be Transformers and Twilight: New Moon.

I have an excuse for Twilight: New Moon (I was dragged along by a) my ex, and b) my WoW guild leader at the time, along with half a dozen of the rest of my guild, although admittedly I aided and abetted since by that point in the day I would have agreed to do basically anything that involved not standing up, because ow), but as far as Transformers goes it’s just that it was on during a brief period of disposable income and the cinema was two DLR stops away from work. Also, Optimus Prime’s voice actor really is very good.

I don’t remember a time without VHS tapes, though, so as far as at home viewing goes I’ve rewatched a lot of films, most of which I liked a lot more.

I know I’ve seen some movies more than once in theaters, and Star Wars, for a variety of reasons is most likely the one I’ve seen most.

What I miss, though, even though, with happy inconsistency, I wouldn’t want to roll back technology and culture to that point, is watch old movies on TV with my sister, until station signoff.

I have pain meds now. Very tame pain meds. I have my license plates and my possessions back from my deceased car. I have a rental I don’t like because nothing is in the right place. I have talked to so many assorted claims adjusters my head is spinning.

I’m currently in a mode of being certain things will go badly on the car shopping front. The goalposts will be moved, and I won’t get a car.

My car was a good car. Toyota, Honda, and Subaru would all brag about making that car, if the had.

I am sort of overwhelmed by the idea that people have seen many movies many times in the theater. Growing up in a very small town, where seeing a movie in a theater meant driving 30-45 minutes to one of the larger towns which had a theater, combined with not having a car, and not having any money to pay for a movie even if I did have a way to get there, meant that most of my time was spent reading books from the library… a lot of them over and over again. I saved up what little money I did get from babysitting and odd jobs, and sent away for Bantam and Pocket Books’ Star Trek novels, because postage was cheap back then and at least my town had a post office.

I’ve never seen Star Wars or Star Trek: The Motion Picture in a theater.

I do remember seeing Rocky Horror maybe 3 times at midnight showings (with accessories) while I was at university. And I was in a relationship for 1.5 years with another student who worked at the local video store, and so was finally able to see for free a lot of the movies I had never gotten to see in the theater.

When I did finally graduate from university and lived in a city with theaters, I spent what little disposable income I had on cable TV with movie stations and on Blockbuster’s 2-for-1 video rentals on Tuesdays, and in that way caught up with a lot of movies I had not gotten to see before.

These days I mostly go to the SuperMegaSoundScreen theater for the first run of the big SF movies, but it’s a rare movie that I feel compelled to see more than once, and many of them I’m content just to wait and see via video streaming (I refuse to engage in pirated movies) since they don’t strike me as being worth the money.

@JJ: I was in a rural area, with a 40 minute drive to the nearest drive-in (where I saw Star Wars in 1979 (its second release, the one with “Ep 4” added)), and 75 minutes to the nearest inside theater, so I didn’t see many movies in the theater. In my college town, though, there was a theater with one screen that would show a particular movie twice a night for a week, and I think I saw a few movies twice there (some friends of mine saw “Purple Rain” 5 times in a week at that theater – I wasn’t around that week to help them make different life choices).

I think the film I’ve seen most in the cinema (and possibly video) is Blues Brothers. I’ve also been the projectionist for said film twice (and in one of those cases, we spliced in a short piece from the trailer than the last reel had somehow managed to leave out of the actual reel).